A Study in Onyx
by submerge2015
Summary: AU Post-Bella's 18th birthday in New Moon. No one was honest about the reasons that everything fell apart, until it was too late to go back. A Carlisle/Bella story. Work in progress.
1. Prelude

Memory, for me, is like hitting rewind on a machine that has been recording video my entire life.

My mind has captured every moment – the tapping of 1,000 pencils on as many different desks, the trees in hundreds of different towns across every continent on this planet, the sound of the air rushing past me as I take off in pursuit of any manner of prey. What my children's last moments looked like in their original forms, their smell, the taste of their skin. What Esme looked like when I first saw her, sixteen and carefree and embarrassed to be seen so broken by a traveling doctor with kind eyes.

I remember scanning the depths of my memory as a human: facts and figures, dates, the outfits I wore, friends I was with and topics of conversation, momentous events and, if I strained hard enough, maybe a vague recollection of scent or touch-nothing like the almost overwhelming history I now have recorded in my mind. To begin to look back into 400 years of full-color, nearly three-dimensional experiences is not without some effort, at least if one does it with the intention of focusing on specific moments. And this I do daily; it is a preferred mental exercise to return to the past and recapture a glance, a touch, the parting of lips, the hush of silence, the millions of small moments that somehow come together to serve as my past.

So many such as myself choose not to dwell on the past; others cannot escape it, choosing to remain trapped within its clutches for the rest of their eternity, as long as it may be. I cannot be Alice, with no sense of her own past and her eyes firmly planted in what is coming next, as much as I refuse to be my old friend Marcus, so apathetic to his surroundings that he might as well not be there at all. In these times, though, not so far removed from moments which were much happier, I cannot help but escape into memory and thoughts of what could have been- should have been, if I had been stronger and less logical and more of a man than the father and leader I have become.

The memories that plague me now, and have plagued me for some time, are those of the night of a birthday party, one of the first that we had celebrated in a while, since Emmett had joined the family so many years before.

It had been Alice's idea, of course, to throw young Isabella a party, one which undoubtedly would be uncomfortable with just the girl and my family for company, particularly in absence of traditional birthday fare such as cake and drinks. She had been undeterred by my comments in this vein, spending the evening hours after school setting up one of our living rooms with lighting, music, and gifts that we had all contributed to, including a travel voucher to go visit Bella's mother in Florida- an imperative from Alice for reasons unbeknownst to myself or Esme to this day. I admit that it had turned out to be a charming display, and my family seemed relatively happy and at ease, with Alice and Edward's good spirits as of late setting the tone for a peaceful evening spent together.

Bella had spent the majority of the summer months with the family, often to be found on the couch with Edward, running through the forest on his back on their way to their favorite meadow, or with a book in hand as he worked on his latest composition in the music room. She and Alice had traversed as many shopping malls as possible on days when the sun didn't shine and when Alice could actually convince her to go; she had begun to spend time with Jasper in the company of Alice, as well, a casual friendship that was encouraging to me as a sign of Jasper's increasing comfort around humanity. In many ways, she was filling a gap for all of us that I had previously imagined only existed for Edward, a hole in his life where his mate should have been.

As busy as I made myself with work and research, I barely had time for the girl, but even I would have been foolish to claim that she had not made an impact on my life in many ways unrelated to the changes in my children. Bella's unassuming, quiet and awkward nature belied a passionate spirit, thoughtful and emotional and growing stronger with every moment spent with us. She was a child still, yes, but one that was quickly growing into the woman I could envision her becoming, a mix of Esme's compassion and love with the fiery intensity of Rosalie and the Denali sisters. Despite my initial concerns, and they had been many, she was slowly ingratiating herself into our lives and into all of our hearts.

I could hear them upstairs while Alice put the final touches on the birthday display, as Edward and Bella walked through my study, Edward giving her a woefully abridged history of my life and my time spent with the Volturi coven. I made a mental note to speak to her more extensively on my experiences at some point, if she were at all interested – unlike many others in my family, I have never been hesitant or unable to speak on any aspect of my past, and it is a story I selfishly enjoy telling, if I am being completely honest. Edward's version was not really doing three-and-a-half centuries of life any sort of justice.

I could hear the fear in her voice when he spoke about the Volturi, when he told her about their efforts to maintain the secrecy of our kind and the methods they employed in doing so, and wondered if she was tying me to them in her mind- if her fear of them would extend to me as someone who had once walked among them. She had every reason to worry about the Volturi's influence in our world, on us as a family and on her as an individual, in particular: she was a human with knowledge of vampires, a status which is held as highly illegal within our kind. With Edward still refusing to accept her demands and change her, she was a liability for all of us that could easily see to our ruin if we were not careful.

Though we had not spelled that out for her, it was always on all of our minds, and now with the introduction of the Volturi to Bella, perhaps she, too, would begin to realize the potential consequences of this relationship, were Edward to never accept her fate.

Alice had been irritated, then, that Edward would broach this particular subject that night, knowing that Bella's insightfulness and intelligence would eventually lead her to question her safety and ours as a result. Running upstairs to stop any more flow of conversation, the rest of us assembled as we had been carefully instructed to do, Rosalie reluctantly standing off to the side with her mate, her Alice-purchased gift held stiffly in her hands. My daughter did perhaps go too far from time to time, adjusting reality to her visions of the future instead of simply letting things play out as they would, and this unnatural placement of us in couples at the bottom of the stairs was no exception.

As Edward and Bella descended the stairs after a bouncing Alice, Bella's embarrassment at being the center of attention obvious despite my lack of Jasper's gift of empathy, Esme and I broke formation to embrace her, our happiness at her being in our home and with our family clearly evident on our faces. A camera had flashed, then – Alice had 'found' it at the bottom of Bella's bag minutes prior – and Rosalie skipped any pretence at making idle birthday-related chatter by handing Bella her gift, indifferently revealing what it was before Bella even had the box open.

I flashed ahead to a few moments later, when everything went completely wrong. Alice had wrapped our gifts in traditional wrapping paper, and Bella had begun to work on opening it, Esme making poor jokes about Bella being pale off to my side. It was then that Bella's finger slipped and she sliced it open just slightly against the edge of the wrapping paper, a tiny droplet of blood pooling for a mere second before she wrapped it tightly in one fist, timidly announcing her paper cut while anxious eyes scanned the room for signs of any reaction.

Every time that the memory replays, I focus on a different element. Chaos, everywhere. I rewatch the scene again and see Jasper's eyes, how they changed from golden brown to viscous black in a second and the light smile on his face disappeared into a hungry snarl. I can see Emmett and Rosalie's immediate rush to their brother, Emmett's own thirst appearing as only a dim shadow in his golden gaze before his attention was focused back on Jasper, appearing on the other side of me to restrain him in his attack on Isabella.

I watch Edward, frantic over the smell of her blood now that he had unthinkingly flung her aside to protect her from his brother's forward surge, straight into a glass fixture that had shattered on impact. I can see him working to protect her while battling every instinct he had, and the rage that was quickly building. I can see him turn angry eyes on me as I run to her, the doctor taking hold with my desire to protect, to help- glass was embedded up and down her arm and she would need stitches, quickly. I can feel him standing over us, the hate in his eyes obvious to me despite the stoic mask of his face.

I had been confused, but stared him down with my body protectively in front of Bella's as I ordered him to leave, to find Jasper. Words coming out of my own mouth about how he would be Jasper's only chance at solace over the event, words I didn't particularly believe but which were intended, in retrospect, to force him to move, to provide a rationale for why he should leave and I should remain, alone, with her. Why I needed him gone.

Even after all this time and hundreds of moments of scrutiny and speculation, hundreds of instances where I replayed the event over and over in my head, I still can't trust myself to believe what Edward saw, what he claims he heard and knew. If I break it down second by second, if I force myself to recall what was going through my mind and not on the sights and smells around me, on the frantic actions of my family, I can see it, there, clear and calling out to me. So obvious- and yet, I have let doubt claw away at me for years, tried to tell myself that it didn't happen, that I'm only remembering it because Edward says it was there.

I have questioned my reasons for wanting it to not be true, just as much as I have reveled in the moments where I believe it, packed my bags to go find her, before realizing that it's been too long, that I'm too late.

I watch again and I find it, the instant the blood pooled on the tip of her finger, the sudden movement and the crash as she fell into the glass, as blood begin pouring more freely out of the mess of cuts up and down her arm. I find the moment, where, holding Jasper back, the smell of that blood hit me and I knew- I knew.

She was _mine._ And I would have her.


	2. 2

Part 2

It is generally considered truth that when you meet your mate, you simply _know_.

While not a physical event such as imprinting, a shape-shifter process which appears to actively alter the entire worldview of those involved, an immortal finding its mate is said to be clear-cut, undeniable – electricity on your skin and fire in your eyes and the irrefutable urge to take your mate and make them yours.

When Emmett awoke and first set eyes on Rosalie, that knowledge was there, was evident in their immediate search for privacy and the not-so-subtle sounds reverberating throughout the forest that night and our home for weeks after. That was the way it was for them, and for Jasper and Alice, and, most recently, for Edward, when he finally met Lily and relieved some amount of the interpersonal strain that had suffocated our relationship for the last twenty-five years.

I had still been unaware, at the time, of the truth surrounding the devolution of our father-and-son relationship; of course I knew that it had stemmed from that night with Isabella Swan and his resulting decision to leave her and move our family across the country, but it wasn't until two months after his discovery of Lily that he had revealed the actual story behind his overwhelming anger and disappointment with me.

It was Lily that had originally found me, sitting outside with Esme in her small rose garden outside our house in Maine. We had been discussing nothing of consequence: Rosalie's plans to take Emmett away for a vacation to Isle Esme, our preferred couples location, her struggles at work with being a woman in an office of men who thought they could design better buildings by virtue of their balding heads and the organ between their legs. Hadn't it been over a century since feminism began to eat away at these attitudes – why could humans, so flexible and changing compared to the eternal statues that we had become, never seem to move beyond that which they had once learned? Why was their history always repeating itself?

Talk had always been easy between Esme and I; she was as always a nearly perfect companion in all things, our shared interests making us extremely compatible as people and as lovers. She had brought life and love back into my life, filling a tremendous void that had lingered for centuries, making me realize there was still light in the world and new adventures to be found, even after all this time. She had become a mother to our family and a source of compassion, affection, and strength for our children, an ocean of calm and a never-ending fountain of love at the center of the household.

For years I had wished that both of us were wrong – that we were meant to be together the way that the other members of the family were, destined to be mates for eternity. It took me longer than it should have to accept that what we have will end, or change, someday, and that somehow there is something better out there for both of us. We simply enjoy each other for now, trust in each other and confide our fears and hopes and desires as married couples do, giving each other almost all of ourselves while knowing that one day we will each meet someone else who will bring us a love and a fire we can't even begin to conceive of as we are.

Or, at least, she will.

"Carlisle?"

I turned away from Esme, seeking the eyes of my newest daughter, the youngest of our family by far and Edward's true mate.

Changed merely two years prior by a random nomad who barely got her through a week of newborn training before abandoning her, Lily was an excitable, imp-like girl with dark brown hair reaching just beyond her jawline, a mischievous gleam permanently embedded in her eyes, and a fondness for mismatching thrift store clothing that had already left Alice in fits more than once. Other than that rather large departure, she was akin to a younger version of her new sister, bursting with youthful energy that was accepted with great amounts of relief by our somewhat worn and weary family. "Lily?"

She hopped up next to me, perched on one of the large boulders that circled Esme's patch of earth. "Listen, I think Edward…I think he needs to talk to you. He's been talking to me a lot, and he feels guilty, and there's only so much I can do to help, and I don't know you guys enough to really offer any good advice, and-"

I cut her off, then, knowing that her tendency to carry on would create a much larger explanation than was absolutely necessary. "He feels guilty about what, talking to you? Is he inside?"

"No," she said, "I mean, he feels…I guess he was trying to explain your relationship to me, and he just told me a lot of things, and he feels bad about the way things have been between the two of you? He said you used to be really close, and then things..?" She trailed off and shrugged, her two months with us not allowing her the experience to offer any additional insight into the situation.

Deciding to save her from any further attempts at explanation, I stood up and patted her lightly on the shoulder. "We're a family; we get into disagreements from time to time. Edward and I are fine, don't worry. I'll speak with him," I said, smiling at Esme as I left the two of them in the had taken to each other quickly, Lily's age and personality leading her to reach out to the closest mother figure she could find as soon as she joined our home. It was a good match for Lily, and a wonderful experience for Esme to have someone who could truly use her love and guidance as a teenage girl would.

The sounds of their happy conversation carried across the lawn to me as I made my way into the house, seeking a son who had apparently seen fit, I hoped, to speak openly about this nagging void between us after so many years. Apparently Lily's positive influence had been felt more quickly than I had anticipated, after all.

"Edward?" I asked, rounding the corner into his room with a light knock on the open door. We were alone in the house, the rest of the family having begun school for the year, while Edward and Lily stayed home in an attempt to ease her transition into our family and into our particular brand of vegetarian lifestyle.

"Hey," he said, sitting on the room's only seating surface other than a small desk chair, which I quickly occupied. Edward was stoic, as was usual for him around me these days; he stared straight ahead to a spot far off my left shoulder, avoiding eye contact and generally seeming displeased and uncomfortable to be having any sort of major conversation with me. Perhaps he was not as ready as Lily suggested.

"I can come back another time if you're busy," I offered. "Lily simply mentioned that you needed to speak with me."

His face stiffened slightly at my words, and he paused just long enough that I had begun to stand to leave the room before he responded. "No, she's right. I do need to talk to you. I'm just honestly not sure what to say, or how to start."

I situated myself back into the chair, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees while I considered him. "She said it was about…our relationship. About how it's changed. I know it's not something we've ever discussed openly, Edward, though I don't know why. I have simply adjusted to this level of closeness between us, now. I assumed you'd tell me what's going on when you're ready."

He nodded, mirroring my position for a moment before leaning back against the cushion of the futon. He was restless, nervous- which was beginning to make me nervous, as well. "Like I said, son, if you do not want to talk, I'm not going to force you into anything, though it might help to just be honest with me for once."

He winced, glaring at me before avoiding eye contact once again. "Can you really, _honestly_ tell me that you don't know why I've been so frustrated, so distant with you all this time?" he asked, his voice thick with repressed anger. "Or you didn't think, sometime in the last two decades, hey, maybe I should talk to Edward about this?"

"Of course I considered speaking with you –and I have tried to get you to move on, to stop dwelling in the memory of Bella, to give you new experiences and take you new places to get her off your mind. I have done everything I could think of to alleviate the pain you've been in over the loss of her in your life. What more would you have me do?"

He laughed, then, charged with disbelief and annoyance. "You tried to _help _me? You-"

Edward shook his head, stood up and paced to the end of the room, hand resting against the window as he looked out into the heavy gray skies lighting up the day. He paused in contemplation, sighing slowly before starting again. "I didn't want you to come in here so I could get upset with you, Carlisle. I have no reason to be upset anymore, other than for the memory of too many years feeling lost over her. I have Lily, and she was right for me all along – it wasn't Bella. It wasn't meant to be Bella."

He turned around, looking me in the eye where I now stood several feet before him. "But really, do you really not know? Haven't you gone over every detail of that night, the night Jasper tried to attack her? Haven't you wondered what went wrong?"

Of course I had- hundreds of times. Thousands of seconds watching that video in my mind, ignoring my own experience while I looked at the others'. I told him as much. He had to know that I had, so often had I done so within the range of his gift.

"Maybe it was your own experience you should have been paying attention to, Carlisle."

I frowned. "What do you mean? I ran to Jasper, Emmett and I held him back… I ran to her- I stitched her arm. What more is there?"

"You sent me away," he said, his eyes suddenly looking inquisitive, concerned. "You've never thought about why you did that? Jasper didn't need me that night. He needed Alice, he needed someone to tell him it was okay, and that he hadn't touched her or hurt her- that _I _did that. The entire rest of the family was helping him. Why did he need me? What were you thinking when you ran to her?"

I played the memory in my mind again, the paper cut, the blood on her finger, the crash against the wall. Holding back Jasper, running to Bella. Stitching her arm. Nothing had changed.

Edward shook his head at me, watching the events along with me as I recalled them. "I really thought you just knew and were…I don't know, hiding it from me. Being self-sacrificing," Edward said, his voice softer now, less angry. He almost seemed to feel bad for me, and I could see the guilt that Lily had mentioned making its way to the surface, replacing the rage that had been there before.

"What are you trying to make me see, Edward?" I asked, confused now as I remembered being then, watching his entire body shut down against her and against me. "What am I missing that's so important?"

Silence, as he considered me and I looked back at him, hoping for a resolution, for whatever he believed to come forth through his lips so that we could begin work on repairing this broken relationship. Nothing, to me, seemed monumental enough to have happened in that moment to have forced this rift.

I could see it in his eyes when Edward made the decision to finally tell me. Anticipation flooded me suddenly, sensing as I did the nervousness rapidly filling Edward's body as well. "When Jasper came at her the first time," he started, awkwardly running a hand through his hair, "I hit her and she flew back against the wall- remember?"

_Of course I did. _

"So there was all that blood – I remember I could smell it, and I wanted it, but I wanted to keep him away, more – you had run to him and so had Emmett and Rose, and everything was going to be okay even if she was hurt and Jasper was going to need some time….but then you smelled it, Carlisle. Her blood, I mean. Do you remember that part? You never go over that part when you replay the memory," he added, somewhat accusingly.

"I smell blood all the time, Edward. If I was more aware of hers than I usually am, I don't remember that. My focus was elsewhere, on getting Jasper out of there and keeping Bella safe."

"You smelled her blood and you ran to her, and you – what were you thinking, then? When you ran to her?"

I frowned again, tired of this line of conversation. "Whatever it is that you thought you heard, Edward – whatever it was, just tell me. I don't remember thinking anything other than that I needed to resolve the situation and keep everyone safe. What is it that you think you heard?"

Edward took a step toward me, aggressive for a moment before softening, reconsidering his move. He crossed his arms across his chest, and his eyes fell to the ground. "You….your mind…._recognized _her, Carlisle. You smelled her blood and you…_knew."_

I stared at him, his words initially not registering. _Knew?_ Knew…what? Surely not that she was my…mate? I had been around Bella countless times, had touched her, become accustomed to her scent in our home. I had spoken with her on a number of occasions and was delighted to have her join us, to have a partner for Edward at last, but not in any single moment did I think that she was mine in that way. She was so young, so incredibly human and so devoted to Edward…

"You did, though, that night. She was human, Carlisle – it's not like when two vampires meet and they instinctually recognize each other as their mate. It's different with humans. Maybe it was in her blood, and it got exposed and you could just suddenly tell, I don't know. I know what I felt, what _you _thought – in that instant, you were sure. Completely certain that she was yours. You knew it, and you _wanted_ her. And I just don't understand why, after all that recollection, that you can't remember having that thought, because as soon as it appeared in your mind, you had released Jasper and run over between me and her to help her and you sent me away," he said, slowly, the last few words dragged out of him as though they pained him.

"You wanted me away from her. Think about why you did that. I wasn't a danger, and I sure as hell wasn't helpful to Jasper."

We looked at each other, my incredulous gaze staring unblinking into his questioning eyes that had not yet lost all of the resentment that he had held against me all these years. How could this be true? He had to have invented it, his blood lust and adrenaline from Jasper's sudden aggressiveness combining to alter his version of events. "I really don't think-"

"Well, reconsider," he said, cutting me off. "Listen, Carlisle. I don't want to continue this, with you- the negative energy and me sitting here blaming you for everything, for ruining my chances with Bella, for how miserable I've been. I met Lily and she is… perfect," he said, a smile lighting up his features before crumpling again with sudden pain. "But now-I just haven't told you, and I knew what she would have been to you, and I waited…maybe I waited so long on purpose, I don't know. I just want you to think about it, Carlisle. Reflect on what _you _felt, on what _you _thought. You'll see that I'm right."

A sad, small smile crossed his face. "And when you do, when you realize what I cost you…well. You'll understand why I feel guilty, now. Why I'll spend forever making it up to you."

Edward approached me, his hand touching lightly on my shoulder, before leaving the room.

I was left alone with my thoughts, and the beginning of years of endlessly hitting repeat on the video that was my last memory of Bella Swan.


End file.
